Walk of Life is like Robert Frost says... "I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep"

Saturday, January 07, 2006

A Long Lost Friend

The term “Long Lost Friend” was always a funny phrase for me. I believed that you can never lose a good friend and then rediscover him/her again after a while… I thought that friends would always stay in touch… But i never thought of those friends who were in your life when you were too small. I never thought of that! Until yesterday when something very bizarre happened to me. I found a Long Lost Friend.

This was all the way back in 1st grade (15 yrs back) :) when I joined this school called Vidyadhiraja Vidya Mandir in Trivandrum, India. I had a very extrovert attitude (yeh... I had) and a knack for making friends (I still do). We formed a gang of 1st graders (all guys) who used to chat away to glory while the teacher tried to imbibe in us the seed of knowledge (chuckle).

The teacher literally got sick and tired of me and complained about my behavior to my mom, who gave her full liberty to do as she pleases with me. She pondered over the problem and came up with a brilliant solution. She placed me in a place where I was surrounded with girls and I kind of drew myself into a shell like a tortoise.

She had a solution for her problem… But for how long? She didn’t realize that man is a social animal. Adaptation and the character to make maximum out of the available resources is one of man’s most celebrated abilities. In short, now I had a “Chatter Club” going in with the girls, who where sweet and quiet as per her calculations.

There I met Laxmy… My number one accomplice and joint secretary of the “Chatter Club”. We had a great time together. My mother still says that during the parent-teacher interactions, they had nothing else to say but complaints about both of us chatting, oblivious of what was going around us… I do not remember much about that school other than her and another handful of people. But I left the school when I was in 3rd grade and all memories faded away but a few remained.

And yesterday I got a scrap in my Orkut profile. “Are you the same Raghu and do you remember me, Laxmy from Vidyadhiraja?” Boy was I thrilled. I had found a “Long Lost Friend”.